My roommate was asking if we can watch the Olympics on my Apple TV, and I responded that we can watch most of the interesting stuff using Tablo, but I got to thinking about everything else. Does anyone know the best way to get additional Olympics content without cable? I’d be willing to pay for a service temporarily.
Personally I’ll be proxying into the CBC since NBC has a bunch of the streams and content locked behind cable authentication, which I obviously don’t have since I’m using a Tablo.
It’s great living in Canada as CBC broadcast the Olympics over the air for free and doesn’t restrict it to cable subscribers
@imagine_engine They also seem to have the best coverage over all. At least that was my experience in 2014.
Sweet! How do you proxy to CBC?
Proxy won’t help pull in OTA to get live CBC though if you reside inside or near the Canadian boarder you should be able to access the channel. I have reached out to CBC to see if they will be offering live streaming over their CBC app on the Apple TV and waiting on their reply. Alternatively you can access recorded content by subscribing to the “Olympic” channel in the YouTube app which is available in the Apple TV App Store and should be accessible on the Roku.
@Zman_Tablo I’ve found the best way is to use services like Unlocator and Unblock-Us. Both are DNS proxies which work differently than what you’d normally expect. Instead of dumb pipes that you do everything through like your normal Proxy or VPN, DNS Proxies only single out specific packets to be shunted through their proxies and are site specific. The DNS Proxy has to add specific support for a site so only the critical packets get proxied, leaving everything else, including the video streams themselves and your normal web browsing, to go over your normal connection at full speed with no bottlenecks. This means that DNS Proxies can give you HD streams with little bandwidth overhead, and they’re cheap too. Both Unlocator and Unblock-Us have 7-day no questions asked free trials, after which you pay around $5 USD per month, or less if you pay for 6 or 12 months ahead of time. And all you have to do to setup the service is change the DNS settings on either your Router or the Device itself. That’s it. Though some devices like the Roku require extra hoops to jump through because of hardcoded DNS servers or region-locked apps.
PS: @imagine_engine CBC provides live-streams of all the Olympic events and VODs for their extra content for free to residents of Canada, so there’s no need to get their OTA signal, only need to convince their website that you’re in Canada. Not sure about their Apple TV app,(EDIT: Found a post from a user that said CBC on Twitter told them that their Olympics iOS app would be Air-play compatible, but there wouldn’t be a Apple TV app) but their Website and Mobile apps will definitely have the live streams. They’ll even have 360-degree VR experiences if you’ve got a viewer to slot your iPhone or Android into. http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/rio-cbc-olympic-games-programming-1.3433563
CBC’s superior coverage of the Olympics is just an evil ploy to get everyone to cheer for Canada.
…ah…VPN does the same thing for Netflix as well… the IP address of the VPN is in the US so Netflix streams… I am assuming I can establish my VPN in Canada to do the same thing… cool beans…
Yeah, if you can switch your VPN to a Canada node then it’d also work. The disadvantage of course is that streaming through a VPN limits you to the bandwidth that that VPN can provide you, unlike a DNS proxy which doesn’t have such restraints. But if you’re perfectly happy with your VPN’s performance, then by all means use it, especially if you’re already paying for it.
Go Canada go! The land of beautiful scenery, great beer, the finest women and CBC
Yer lucky pilgrim John Wayne is dead.
Sling just announced the addition of NBC to its “blue” package. This gives access to NBC, NBC Sports, and USA, which will all carry Olympics coverage. I’m looking into whether that subscription grants access to the NBC Sports app on the Apple TV like the “orange” package does for ESPN. I’ll update when I figure it out.
FYI, Sling Blue increased to $25 for new subscribers.
Consider Playstation Vue as well. It has ESPN, ESPN2, FS1, FS2, and NBC Sports in its $30 package. $5 more gets you the BTN, ESPNews, ESPN U, Fox Sports Regional (login only in my market), NBC Golf, and SEC Network.
I’ve found that PSV can login to almost any app. Sling has worked for Watch ESPN, but I haven’t found many others that actually work.
It is only in 10 markets: Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Hartford, Conn., Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego and Washington D.C.
It’s in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas, too.
I’ve got it.
You are correct. For whatever reason, that article I posted just showed 9 of the 10 markets, leaving out SF.
I have Sling Blue, and I do enjoy finally being able to watch Braves games again (at least they are playing better now).
Unfortunately, if you live in one of the major markets for which Vue provides local TV, then the cheapest package is $40 and definitely not worth it, since in those major markets we can get the local channels for free. Vue is only valuable if you don’t live in those major markets. They need to make local TV an add-on.
I totally agree.